It’s A Big Brother World…Who’s Confused About It?

Before I read any of the module 6 articles, I was excited to use the example of Facebook offering up users online buying habits right on their pages. Well, Louise Story beat me to it in her NYT article ‘To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye On You,’ bringing this up on her article which basically says what most net folks already know… people are tracking our every click and using it to make $$$. Cookies, Google Ad Words, “Related” links, no matter what you type in, click on, purchase it is obvious that it is being tracked both online and in the “real world.”

Last month I got a letter from Discover Card telling me that I would have made a certain amount of cashback bonus points if I had purchased my Best Buy item through their online store. I didn’t even use my Discover Card in the store! Social Security numbers have become a roll off the tongue piece of information. GPS tracking lets you track down cell phones, cars, even turn them off if stolen. My 8 pound yorkie Butch and 10 pound cat Rocco both have a tracking microchip in them if they ever get lost.

In a world where Gawker, Twitter, Facebook status’ are updated allowing you to know where everyone is, what they are doing and what they are thinking, is there any surprise that our information is being shared and used on a moment to moment basis by different marketing companies, Homeland Security know everything about what is going on. Is this really an issue? If you were to ask a person, surely they would call this an invasion of privacy however it tends to work towards an advantage to most. Had I not gotten that letter from Discover, I probably wouldn’t have even known. If my Google searches didn’t save and offer up related searches I probably would never have heard about the Masters program at Quinnipiac.

CNBC’s ‘Big Brother Big Business’ from 2006 goes through the breadth of just how many things share tracking information from embedded serial numbers in digital photos, cd burners to hidden GPS in rental cars tracking where you drive, many people are shocked to find all of the new ways they are being tracked.

I think that with all of the new technologies being introduced daily, it should come as no surprise that people have the ability to know exactly what we want, what we like what we buy what we hate so they can also advance how they sell what they sell,m just the circle of the capitalistic world.

I don’t really have a problem with this, I actually like that what I do gets factored in to how some companies may work, I know there’s the invasion of privacy, but I Tweet, I update Facebook… you don’t need to be a secret chip or agency to know what I’m doing and where I am doing it. In a society that is embracing this constant communication styles, to me this is almost a non issue.